# Bayesian classifiers in ruby? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 7, 2006, 10:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bayesian-classifiers-in-ruby/74704 "2006-11-07T10:53:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Giles_B)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 10:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bayesian-classifiers-in-ruby/74704/1 "2006-11-07T10:53:06Z")
I’m researching existing Bayesian classifiers in Ruby – it looks as if there are two, one called Bishop, a Python port, and another called Classifier. Has anybody worked with them? Any upsides, downsides? Both theoretical and practical perspectives. Partly to expand my brain and partly for the sake of putting some real software together. ---
**Author:** ![Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Giles_B)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 10:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bayesian-classifiers-in-ruby/74704/2 "2006-11-07T10:53:12Z")
Giles B. a écrit : > I’m researching existing Bayesian classifiers in Ruby – it looks as > if there are two, one called Bishop, a Python port, and another called > Classifier. > > Has anybody worked with them? Any upsides, downsides? Both theoretical > and practical perspectives. Partly to expand my brain and partly for > the sake of putting some real software together. I have used Bishop to classify the 488 articles of the Project of European Constitution and it was helpful. Bishop is very simple and consists of just one file and a couple of classes. There is room for improvement in the way it tokenizes code source. Classifier is more complex, with multiple files and more classes. Morever it may use the Gnu Scientific Library to perform its calculation, I have recently tried to use both of them to help a teacher classify CS homeworks and analyze how many different solutions the students had come up with. I used simple example like printing number from 0 to 10 in C. In one case, I used a “for” loop, and in another I used a “while” loop. Then I tested a candidate program using a while loop with different variable naems. Bishop’s guess was that it was more like the ‘for’ loop. Not very conclusive. Classifier did not better in that it failed to tokenize the C source text. It was trying to stem a keyword but failed. As long as you analyze natural language, both seem suited, although with different degrees of complexity under the hood, both have a very simple interface: define a category and train it. Then a guess interface to evaluate candidates. J-P ---
**Author:** ![Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Giles_B)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 10:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bayesian-classifiers-in-ruby/74704/3 "2006-11-07T10:53:12Z")
I wrote a bayesian classifier to classify nursing home calls. If you want I can email you the source. It works with about a 95% accuracy. Tom R. ---
**Author:** ![Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Giles_B)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bayesian-classifiers-in-ruby/74704/4 "2006-11-07T10:55:39Z")
Definitely! That would be very cool. ---
**Author:** ![Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Giles_B)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bayesian-classifiers-in-ruby/74704/5 "2006-11-07T10:55:39Z")
> As long as you analyze natural language, both seem suited, although with > different degrees of complexity under the hood, both have a very simple > interface: define a category and train it. Then a guess interface to > evaluate candidates. I’m hoping to develop yet another spam filter. in that sense I can only say I’m sort of analyzing natural language. Not all of it is natural language, some of it is code. In the Paul Graham thing where he came up with this idea, if I remember right, he said that a font tag with the color red turned out to be the single most reliable indicator of spam. Obviously in HTML e-mail there are going to be similar trends. However if the tokenizer is the only problem that may be something I can change without too much stress. ---
**Author:** ![Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@Giles\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Giles_B)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bayesian-classifiers-in-ruby/74704/6 "2006-11-07T10:55:50Z")
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid), Giles B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > indicator of spam. Obviously in HTML e-mail there are going to be > similar trends. However if the tokenizer is the only problem that may > be something I can change without too much stress. Long ago, I wrote an interface to the ifile program and I use that in my spam/email filtering. ifile is abandomware at the moment. I think I posted it on the ruby mailing list at ome point, you might try searching for it. \_ Booker C. Bense -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBRUpDBWTWTAjn5N/lAQFx9QP+NqHWWcudTBnJK3u2qofqheu6p0hJ3W2I L6elwknvioDWRuwWO/rksM2DZXwQ6trTHkpEnh0REEsWGl6n683ckuYBbr/ElVA2 9SfGWM0cXspEVX6Xsx/xFsnpF8mdF6le6SdxSEHr0HGhq+8NY1HFoLSOEKdEIBo6 p2sZwJ6+94Q= =1IG0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----